It is difficult to deal with a narcissist when you are a grown, independent, fully functioning adult. The children of narcissists have an especially difficult burden, for they lack the knowledge, power, and resources to deal with their narcissistic parents without becoming their victims. Whether cast into the role of Scapegoat or Golden Child, the Narcissist's Child never truly receives that to which all children are entitled: a parent's unconditional love. Start by reading the 46 memories--it all began there.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Nearly one third of the invitations for the Facebook group that I sent have not been accepted, so I am concerned that they may have gone astray. If you sent me an email requesting entry to the Facebook group and are disappointed that you didn't hear back from me, we may be having a communication problem.

Please go to the email address from which you sent your request and check for a mail from me. I have replied to every request I have received, and I replied within 24 hours of receiving your request. So if you don't have a reply from me, one of two things happened...I mistyped your email address when I sent your invitation or I never received your request in the first place.

The group has more than 20 members at present and is going well...the members are chatting with each other and offering comfort, support and helpful advice. If you wish to be a part of this new and growing community of people who "get" what is going on with you and your dysfunctional family, send me an email (use the form at the bottom of this page) and tell me a little about why you would like to join. ALL invitations go via email, so be sure to include the email address you would like me to sent the invitation to.

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Did you grow up wondering what you did that was so awful
that your narcissistic parent preferred another child over you? Or did you grow
up believing you knew why…and you thought it was because that sibling had
somehow “earned” the favour of your parents but you had not?

Perhaps you grew up angry, knowing that the other child did
not warrant the special treatment s/he received and that you did not deserve
the negative treatment you were given. Or you were held to a higher standard
than other children in the family or just other children in general.

If any of these fit your experience of growing up, know
right now, that the party at fault was not you, it was your dysfunctional
parent and everyone who let that behaviour go by unremarked. Every adult in
your life who didn’t have the compassion to recognize your abuse or who saw but
didn’t have the guts to speak up and take action on your behalf, is as guilty
as the person who abused you.

So, why were you chosen and one of the other ones weren’t?
The answer is as divergent and disparate as all of our Ns: each N choses his or
her victims for his or her own reasons. But there are several reasons in
common:

Expectations: For
me, it was a case of disappointed expectations. My mother, who was 17 and stuck
out on a hard scrabble farm on a gravel road, miles from town and without a car
or even knowing how to drive, was expecting a smiling, rosy-cheeked cherub,
like the ones who graced the covers of magazines. Deprived of her own adoring
audience due to her marriage and isolation, I was to be the cute little angel
who drew all of the attention back to her. It didn’t work.

Instead, I failed to meet her expectations. I demanded
attention when she wasn’t in the mood to give it to me. I had the audacity to
not want to eat on her schedule, but on my own. I didn’t have any hair to brush
into ringlets and garnish with a bow, I had colic and I had eczema. I didn’t
tolerate the cow’s milk formula that was common at the time and she hated the
smell of the goat’s milk that was the only thing I could tolerate. She had
expected this compliant, agreeable, picture-perfect child and that was not what she got.

I was further a disappointment as I grew older because she
set impossible standards for me and I, predictably, failed, which upset her
(and gave her an excuse to have a rage tantrum). I could not mind my younger
brother because he was bigger than I was and I had no way to compel his
obedience. In fact, she regularly set impossible goals for me, and then blamed
me and/or was upset with me when I failed. It was even worse when I didn’t
share her visions (like when she wanted me to be a movie star and make her
millions and I just wanted to play dolls with the little girl across the
street) and worse still when I articulated that fact. Having been taught to not
lie, she would get angry with me when I told an embarrassing or inconvenient
truth. All the way around, I was a disappointment: I couldn’t read her mind,
anticipate her wishes, or perform perfectly the first time every time.

Availability:
Availability enters into it. I was the first born and I was the only child
available to blame everything on…she didn’t get the breakfast dishes washed
before her husband got home from work because of the demanding baby…she got fat
and her figure was ruined because of the baby…she didn’t have any money,
couldn’t go anywhere, didn’t get the chores done because of the baby. Sometimes
a younger child is more available because the older ones are outside playing or
at school…the younger child, whether demanding or not, provides a convenient
excuse for why nothing was done. Because the child is small and lacking in
comprehension, s/he can be perceived as
recalcitrant, rebellious, or defiant when, in fact, the child is simply not yet
capable…a fact that is not taken into account by the narcissist because that
would thwart the narcissists goals of being blameless and entitled to some
Nsupply. How does Nsupply figure into this? She gets sympathy for having to put
up with this difficult child, she has a justification for throwing a rage
tantrum, she is admired for her continued bravery in dealing with the difficult
child. And, of course, she comes away blameless for something that was entirely
her own doing.

Think of old cartoons where one character does something
wrong and, to avoid blame, surreptitiously scoots the evidence of the misdeed
in front of his partner… That is what your availability provided to your NM: you
were there for her to shift the blame onto, and too young, too unaware, or too
intimidated to speak up and set the record straight.

Emotional intelligence:
the emotionally sensitive, those inclined towards compassion and empathy,
represent a great danger to narcissists. And narcissists understand this. With
our empathy, we can see right through them and only through manipulating or
intimidating us can they ensure that we will remain silent and keep the secrets
of who and what they really are. By hurting us in ways that guarantee that we
will continue to seek their love and approval, they further ensure that we will
never “out” them for the monsters they are, never do anything that we fear
could cause them to withdraw the illusion of love we have been making do with
for our entire lives.

They lock down our loyalty with their abuse: as long as they
hold the carrot out there for us, as long as we continue to believe the carrot
still dangles there, we keep trying to take a big bite out of it and enjoy the
warmth and love and approbation we see our NMs handing out to her Golden
Children. Because Ns appear to give love and approval to at least one other
child, we believe that she is not the
problem. We do not recognize that the GCs are also being abused, but
differently from the way we are. And because we believe we are the problem, not our narcissists, we further believe that only
by striving to measure up do we have a chance of grabbing the golden ring. Alerting
the world to what our Ns are really like, “airing our dirty laundry,”
committing anything that even looks like a disloyal act, will sabotage our
chances of getting approval we need and want from the narcissistic parent.

We become complicit in our own abuse as we attempt to keep
the peace and win approval from our Ns. We are chosen to forever strive for the
approbation we so desperately want and need so that we will not reveal what our
insights realize…often we even hide those insights from ourselves because to
acknowledge them sets up a cognitive dissonance that we must resolve or risk
feeling crazy. The acknowledgement of truth is the price of having a chance at
being loved: you can have or the other, but never both...your acknowledgement
and revelation of the truth is a danger the narcissist must prevent at all
costs, lest others believe you and her house of cards and illusion come
tumbling down around her.

This happened to my mother. When her perfidy was revealed in
such a way that most of her flying monkeys were slapped in the face—and slapped
hard—with the truth, many of them recoiled. One uncle was so ashamed of his
part, he drove 12 hours to my house, despite his poor health, to personally
apologize and give me the truth of exactly how she managed to spirit my
children away. The other uncle she duped went NC with her. By the time my
grandmother (N’s mother) died, the only people who were left speaking to her
were the ones who hoped to gain…a cousin who was given some of my grandmother’s
original Art Deco furniture (and promptly allowed her dogs to destroy it), and
my GC brother, and my GGC daughter who found nothing amiss in receiving half of
NM’s estate at the exclusion of me and all of the other grandchildren.
Ultimately, except for a few hangers-on who stood to benefit from their
continued association with her, my NM’s world collapsed and those who had been
duped into being flying monkeys abandoned her…all because the truth finally
came out.

Narcissists are not genuine people. For whatever reason,
they feel compelled to create a persona rather than be their authentic selves.
And then they must protect that persona at all costs. They will do anything
they think they can get away with in order to protect that persona so that the
person behind the mask will not be revealed. Think “Wizard of Oz” and the weak
little person hiding behind the curtain…that story is nothing but the story of
a narcissist and how he joyfully manipulates other who come into his sphere and
the lengths to which he will go to maintain his self-serving fiction.

So, why you? Because the narcissist perceived you as a
threat. Because you were available and unable to fight back or articulate the
truth. Because you disappointed her expectations, very likely through no fault
of your own because her expectations were unrealistic, even irrational. It wasn’t
your fault then, it isn’t your fault now.

And that is my gift to you, this holiday season: the
knowledge that it is not your fault and it never has been. You did not create
this, no matter how the truth has been massaged and twisted upon itself to look
like you did. All those feelings of guilt and inadequacy emanate from the
fundamental lie that underpins the narcissist’s entire existence, the lie that
s/he is ok and you are not.

So you may let it go whenever you are ready. The guilt and
the feelings of inadequacy belong to your narcissist(s) and have been projected
onto you. You have become the receptacle of their self-loathing: it has been
projected onto you and you have accepted it. But you can let it go…they have no
authority over what you believe, only you have that power and you can use it to
keep on believing their lies or you can use it to repudiate them.

Knowledge is power and today you have gained the knowledge
that you were chosen by the narcissist because you were the one they most
feared because you were the one they could tell would be able to see past the
mask into the truth about them. With that knowledge you have gained the power
you need to open your eyes to the reality of your innocence and their
culpability. Use it to your best advantage.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

So, as of today we are up to 16 members...but I have sent out 24 invitations.

If you wrote and asked to be added to the group, please check the email address you sent your message from. If there is no invitation to join the group there, please write to me again and include the email address you would like your invitation sent to. I try to respond to requests for admission to the group within 24 hours of receiving them, so if you have made the request and don't have an invitation, please let me know and I will send another one to the email address of your choice.

We already have some great discussions going on in the group, and what a wonderful, supportive bunch we have already assembled. If you want to take part, just use the email form at the bottom of this page to contact me.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Narcissists are externally focussed. That means they are
more concerned with the appearance of something that the substance.

I grew up in the days before designer consciousness, so few
people were after name-brand goods…and few people could afford them. If
something was advertised in a slick magazine, it was “name brand” and cost more
than a “no-name” brand. Typical name brand goods of my childhood and youth were
Jantzen (swimwear and knitwear), Pendleton (woollens), White Stag (sportswear),
and Keds (canvas shoes). Luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Dior, and Chanel were
the exclusive province of the very rich and ordinary middle class people didn’t
even lust after them—they pretty much didn’t know such things existed.

Narcissists with tight pocketbooks, like my NM, didn’t even
lust after name brand goods…or so she would have you believe. In a kind of
primitive reverse-snobbism, she would look down her nose at people who bought
name brand goods and reprove them for wasting money; why spend all the money on
one sweater with a Jantzen label when you could buy ten sweaters from K-mart
for the same money? She considered herself smarter than they were and was quite
puffed up with pride at her pinch-penny ways.

But, like everything in a narcissist’s life, it was all just
sour grapes. When I was in my very early teens, NM took up with Frank, who
later became my step-father. Frank held the mortgage on our house, so NM had
known him at least since I was six. In retrospect, I suspect she was having an
affair with Frank for years, which would explain why, when Marti, his much
younger wife left him, my NM was waiting in the wings. Marti left behind just
about everything she owned and my NM was in there sorting through Marti’s
things before the dust had even settled.

Much to her dismay, the expensive wardrobe Marti left behind
was too small for NM, but the shoes and the jewellery weren’t. What I found to
be very funny (but was smart enough to keep silent about) was that NM, who had
bad-mouthed Marti’s “spendthrift ways” to everyone we knew, was suddenly
grabbing everything of Marti’s that she could foresee any use for. I can
specifically remember her disparaging Marti for her shoes…a popular and costly
pump called Spring-o-lators…but Marti’s marriage to Frank wasn’t even cold
before those Spring-o-lators were lined up neatly in the bottom of NM’s closet!

The truth was, she was eaten up with envy over the simple
fact that Frank and Marti could afford to buy name brand goods and she couldn’t
and the only way she could deal with it and keep her façade intact was to set
herself on a pedestal of financial superiority. The fact that Marti was buying
better quality merchandise was not taken into account—all that mattered to my
NM was that she could buy ten pairs of shoes with the same money Marti spent on
one pair and that made her superior…at least in her own eyes.

Narcissists have a self-image that may or may not reflect
the image others have of them. My NM’s self-image was that she was superior to
everyone around her, and anyone who had an ability that exceeded hers…well, she
denigrated that ability, called it unimportant, and thereby kept her self-image
of superiority intact. Different narcissists use different methods, but it all
stems from the same place: to keep and protect the self-image they have created
for themselves, be it one of all-encompassing superiority or one of pathetic
victim. And they can contradict themselves from one moment to the next, which
an outsider may see, but the narcissist rationalizes it, never seeing the
contradiction.

I don’t remember most of my childhood Christmases. Just a
few stand out in my mind, and they stand out because of some kind of awfulness
or some kind of realization, or epiphany, that they brought. Most of my life we
were cash-strapped, my mother’s dreams of what she viewed as her entitlement
(her parents were well-off) well out of reach of my blue-collar father. So, she
had a job, which was most unusual among married women at that time, and my
father worked two jobs, one during the day, the other part time at night. And
still, her acquisitive nature outstripped their ability to fund.

Christmas, then, was a lean affair. And while I cannot
remember most of my childhood Christmases, I can deduce what they were like
from the ones I do remember. The year I was eight years old we drove the
thousand miles to my maternal grandparents for the only family Christmas I can
remember. I remember two things most clearly about that Christmas: I was a
nervous wreck with my NM hissing instructions to me all of the time—“sit up
straight,” “pull your skirt down,” “don’t talk unless you are asked a question,
then answer it in as few words as possible, then shut up.” I felt paralyzed by
the fear that no matter how hard I tried to obey, I was going to inadvertently
put a foot wrong and then get humiliated for it in front of my entire assembled
family. The other thing I remember is getting more than one present and being
surprised by it. Really, delightedly surprised. From this I deduce I expected
only one present for Christmas. My grandparents gave me a small set of
encyclopaedias and I was thrilled by it...I loved to read and was insatiably
curious…and I remember being surprised to receive something that I liked and
was happy to receive. Which tells me that the Christmas gifts I got from my
mother probably were more what she wanted me to have rather than what I wished
to receive.

When I was 11 or 12, my parents were divorced and my mother
had a new boyfriend who was fighting for custody of his children with the help
of my NM. We had his two little kids with us for Christmas that year and I
remember being surprised at the big tree with piles of presents under them.
None of them bore name-tags, though, so I had no idea if any of them were mine.
I remember getting up Christmas morning and finding the living room nearly impenetrable
for all the Christmas gifts laid out for the two little ones. Dolls and
tricycles, wagons and trucks, building blocks and water colour sets…everything
you could imagine for a lavish Christmas for little kids was spread across the
room. I was genuinely delighted for the little girl, and gaily pointed out
treasure after treasure for her, retrieving things that she could not reach and
showing her toy after toy. I was vicariously enjoying a bountiful Christmas
through her when my mother, who was sitting on the sofa next to her beaming
boyfriend, cleared her throat and said “Violet, maybe you should leave her
things alone and look behind you.” So accustomed was I to sparse Christmases
that it never occurred to me that there might be something for me in all this
unaccustomed bounty.

Sure enough, behind me the ugly pink bouclé chair was completely buried
in things for me. My initial delight, however, was quickly dampened by the
realization that the “gifts” were actually school clothes, pajamas, underwear
and socks…things she usually bought for me in September but had skipped this
year, telling me she couldn’t afford it and I would have to make do with what I
already had.

It quickly became apparent to me that this whole thing was a
show for the boyfriend…I think she wanted him to propose to her she was showing
him what a wonderful mother she was. We all got dressed and went over to his
parents’ house for Christmas dinner where there were more presents…and this time,
there was a pretty doll for me, a “lady doll” with a small but pretty wardrobe.
The doll came packaged in a long white box, like you would expect a dozen red
roses to come in, and she was quite exquisite. I remember NM telling Grandma
Higgins that I was “too old” for dolls and then telling me I should give the
doll to the little girl. Grandma put the kibosh on that, saying the child was
too young for a “lady doll” (the doll had boobs) and that it had been
specifically chosen for me.

I cannot recall how NM rationalized those Christmases in
which we had or did very little…I can’t recall those Christmases. But my
surprise at receiving more than one gift, my surprise at finding I had any
gifts at all, has to give some inclination as to what those other Christmases
were like.

As an adult, I had a pitched battle with my narcissistic
husband the first year we were married…I had gone to a discount store and
bought a fake tree and a bunch of decorations, and I was very proud of how much
stuff I had gotten for the pittance I had to spend. He was livid…he even
demanded that I return everything for a refund. I refused, telling him that he
did not have to participate, but he was not going to deprive the rest of us of the joys of the season. Thirteen years later, as our marriage crumbled
to dust around us, he had a plan for getting back at me, for destroying the joy
for all of us…he planned to go out to do his last-minute shopping (he always
waited until Christmas Eve to finally capitulate and join in) but this time,
not come home. He was going to spoil Christmas for all of us by becoming a
missing person and set us all into a panic of worry over his disappearance. It
didn’t happen, though, because I called an end to the marriage in June, six
months before he was going to put his plan into motion. He told me about it
later, in an uncharacteristically calm and candid moment when we were signing
some legal papers, after I asked why he was so angry with me about ending the
marriage because we both knew it was over and wanted out. Seems I had stolen
his thunder…his words…by making my move when I did.

Christmas, then, has been a fraught time for me for a good
portion of my life…and I am quite sure that many of you have your own “war
stories” to tell about Christmases gone wrong, about stingy, inappropriate
gifts or lavish overspending by the Ns to polish up their halos. How many times
have I heard of an NM who used the largesse of Christmas as a hook…she is
entitled to thus-and-such from you because of the gifts you received for
Christmas? How many times have I heard of unwilling ACoNs manipulated into
attending holiday “festivities” that turned out to be considerably less than
festive and even downright toxic. How many of us drag ourselves to family
holiday gatherings, only to be disappointed because we hoped…against our better
judgment…that this year it would be “different” (meaning “better”) or because
we feared the consequences of not going?

What can you do to make you dread the holidays less? What
can you do to keep the wolves away from your door…to get out of showing up at
the wolf’s door yourself? You start with putting your head in charge and not
your feelings. Let your brain take over and force your heart to follow its
lead.

1) There is no rule that says you must go to anybody’s house
for the holidays or invite anyone to yours. Invitations should be accepted with
pleasure—if an invitation does not please you, you do not have to accept it, no matter who it is from (parents included).
They should also be extended with pleasure—if you cannot happily extend an
invitation, don’t extend it. (Exception: your partner's children by a previous spouse/relationship…invite them even if you don’t like them unless your partner doesn’t want them there either.)

2) You do not need to make excuses or even give reasons when
turning down an invitation and someone demanding one is out of line. “We have
other plans,” is the most you need to say and if the other person badgers you,
s/he is overstepping the bounds of good manners and respect. You do not have to
say what your plans are, why you aren’t coming to their house or inviting them
to yours…nothing. If they are too persistent and you can’t get rid of them and
you aren’t rude enough to simply hang up in their ear, you can say “I’ll call
you when we are free.” Then call at your leisure, even if that is seven years
in the future.

3) You don’t have to adhere to somebody else’s traditions.
You can make your own. One of the traditions I implemented was that the
children could open wrapped gifts on Christmas Eve, and the Santa gifts would
be under the tree on the morning. This saved me trying to wrap a bicycle or
little red wagon or doll carriage. Those things that could be easily wrapped
went under the tree, the awkward stuff was from Santa. The kids got two
Christmases this way, so it doubled the fun for them.

You can create your own traditions, from food to décor to
gifting to cards…do Christmas the way you want
to do it, not the way you were taught. If you hate eggnog and fruitcake, don’t
have any. If you love Christmas cookies and fudge, make them. Tailor your
Christmas to fit you and those you want
to celebrate it with. That means you can retain any traditions you grew up with
that you like…and you can dump the ones you aren’t so fond of.

4) Put your brain to work when you start feeling sad and
bad. Are you really feeling nostalgic? Or is it more of a longing for the ideal
Christmas, based on TV, movies, and wishful thinking? Were the Christmases you
shared with your family really wonderful, joyous occasions that you miss? Or
were they emotionally fraught experiences in which Uncle Ted got drunk and told
everybody off, Grandma got sniffy because nobody ate her
candied eggplant casserole, Aunt Lulu tried to seduce your father again, and your mother
sniped at you and called you a tattletale when you complained that your GC
brother put gum in your hair?

If you can remember, write down your memories from Christmases
past. Be as detailed as possible…remember even the ugly, painful, humiliating
stuff. Save this…perhaps with your Christmas ornaments…so that when you start
with the heartsore longing that may motivate you to spend Christmas with the
toxic members of your family, you can read, in your own words, what it was really like to “celebrate” with them.

5. So what about feeling guilty for abandoning them on
Christmas? More brain work…this time fire up your logic circuits. If you have
two choices, the first one is to go spend Christmas with people who treat you
badly and make the event miserable and the other choice is to do something—anything—else
but carry around some guilty feelings, which appeals to you more? If you choose
the first option, how long are you going to be upset afterwards for being
treated like the family scapegoat in front of everybody? Have you ever gone to
a family Christmas gathering and been the only one there who didn’t get a gift…and
then got blamed for it because NM “didn’t know if you would be here or not”?
How long do you think that kind of humiliation will linger in your brain?
Longer than the guilt? Consider your options and the consequences…long term as
well as short…for choosing each of them. It is worth it to assuage your guilt by
putting your neck on the block for them yet another year and then carrying home
a steamer trunk full of recrimination?

And why would you feel guilty in the first place? What are
you doing wrong? Just who is the authority in your life, you or your narcissistic
parent? If you are over 18, particularly if you are no longer living with your
parents as a dependent, then you are
supposed to be your own authority figure. You
are supposed to be the person who decides what is right, wrong, appropriate,
inappropriate in your life. Just because your NM tells you that you have an
obligation to respect her doesn’t mean it is true: as an adult, it is your
place to decide if she has earned your disrespect and what you wish to do about
it. Guilt comes about when you do something you believe is wrong or fail to do
what you believe is the right thing…but who says you are wrong? You? Or somebody
else? If it is somebody else, screw ’em—even if that somebody is your parent or
other family member. Guilt is one of the ways they manipulate us and you play
into it if you abdicate the role of authority over your own self.

Look at the whole history of your relationship with your
family members and how they have treated you. You deserve—then and now—to be
treated with love and respect…is that your experience with them? You are
entitled to be treated kindly and respectfully at all times…is that your
experience with them? If it is not, then THEY
are the ones who should be feeling guilty, and the guilt you are feeling is
displaced and inappropriate. You don’t have to keep it, you can put that burden
down knowing that you owe them nothing more than they have given to you.

6. Consequences of your choices. Ah, we must always visit
potential consequences, mustn’t we? One thing I hear all of the time is that
people are afraid they will “lose the family” if they don’t continue to place
their heads on the block whenever it is demanded of them. And if that is the
case, the sad truth is, you have already
lost your family. If nobody is sticking up for you, if they ignore the
situation or, worse, participate when the narcissist(s) start in on you, then
you don’t have a family…you just have a collection of people with whom you
share some DNA.

You can’t change anybody but yourself. Nothing you can ever
do or say or give or submit to, will change another person, make them love you
or even like you. People change for their own reasons, they change because they
see some benefit for themselves in it…and that goes for narcissists by a factor
of ten. If a narcissist cannot see any benefit to himself in making a change,
then he simply will not do it. Other people might be persuaded through their
empathy and compassion, but narcissists don’t have any of that and any changes
you think you might have elicited from them you will later discover to have
been nothing more than an act and as soon as the narcissist gets what she
wants, her behaviour reverts.

So you will have consequences to deal with whether you
continue along as before or whether you decide to make some changes and make
the holidays yours.

And that is all it takes to make your own holiday miracle—decide
to do things differently this year. Refuse to succumb to self-doubt, refuse to
accept the negative messages that the narcissist and her flying monkeys are
probably already sending to you. Acknowledge that whatever you choose to do,
they will be the same, so if you are going to have to endure their negativity,
why not make it worth your while? Go skiing, volunteer at a homeless shelter or
visit a nursing home with small gifts and a big box of cookies. Go to a party…throw
a party and don’t invite the narcissists. Do something very different and don’t
let them spoil it for you—don’t tell them about it! Make Christmas about you…give
yourself a gift, even if it is nothing more than the gift of freedom from their
sniping. You deserve every bit as much holiday joy as anyone else on the planet
and if nobody else is giving it to you, give it to yourself!

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Facebook Group!

The Narcissist's Child now has a Facebook group dedicated to helping adults who had narcissistic parents or parental figures: this group is not suitable for children or for the parents of children whose other parent is a narcissist. Unless you or your spouse had a narcissistic parent, this group will not be the right place for you.

Because the group is classified as a "secret" group, nobody can find it on a Facebook search, so your name and membership are completely confidential.

I personally monitor the group daily. No narcs, trolls, or manipulation/attacks are allowed, and anyone who engages in that kind of behaviour will have to leave the group. The objective is to create a safe place where you can talk to each other (and me) in privacy about the journey from victim to victor.

Unfortunately, spambots have figured away around the Captcha filter that my email app uses and the maker of the app has ignored my requests to make it more robust. I was only allowed 100 emails per month--I am writing this on the 10th of the month and spam has already taken more than 85 of my alloted emails: I have had to remove the email app because the volume of spam is taking all of the emails, leaving none for you. I am currently looking for another email app and when it is installed, I will revise this notice. Until then, however, there is no way to reach me via email.PLEASE DISREGARD THE INFORMATION BELOW UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

If you would like to join, send me an email using the form at the bottom of this page (do NOT use the comment section because that will publish your email address for the world to see) telling me a little about yourself and your experiences with narcissistic parents or parental figures and why you wish to join the group and I will get back to you.

Please double-check that you have included your CORRECT email address...I reply to every request I receive, so if you don't get a reply (and my reply hasn't been dumped into your spam or junkmail folder), that is your first clue that I don't have a correct email address to reach you. Please note, however, that I process requests only on Mondays, so if you don't hear back right away, don't panic...wait for next Monday!

Welcome to The Narcissist's Child, Facebook Edition!

Who Am I?

I am the adult daughter of a Malignant Narcissist mother (MNM). You may call me Violet.

Who follows this blog?

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Want to email me?

No more email--

Unfortunately, spambots have figured out a way to bypass the Captcha in the email app I have been using and the maker of the app has ignored my requests for them to make it more robust. The maker of the app only allows me 100 emails per month and it is only the 10th of the month and spam has already sucked up more than 75 of those emails. I have had to remove the email app as a result--nothing was getting through but spam.

Comments on the blog are not affected but comments lack the privacy of email so please don't include any contact information in your comments.

I am on the lookout for a new email app to replace this one but until I find one, there is no email contact on this blog due to people who don't care if their spam annoys or otherwise causes issues for others. It only takes a few selfish individuals to spoil it for everyone.

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Disclaimer and Terms of Use

The Narcissist's Child contains my experiences as the child of a malignant narcissist and my understanding of the disorder. It is an attempt to describe and demonstrate the dynamics of a relationship with a malignant narcissist, particularly a malignant narcissist mother, to people who have little or no experience with the disorder, those who have been left reeling by the unexpected repercussions of being involved with a narcissist, and for those who, having been involved with one, need the support that come from knowing that you are not alone.

I am not a mental health professional and nothing on The Narcissist's Child should be taken as an expert opinion. This are my experiences, perceptions, and opinions, nothing more. Nothing here is a substitute for the advice of or the diagnosis and treatment by, a mental health professional. Do not rely on information on this site as a substitute for the advice of a qualified mental health professional.

Some links on this site lead to information or resources maintained by third parties. The Narcissist's Child makes no representations as to accuracy, integrity or any other aspect of the linked resources: use at your own risk.

Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the innocent and guilty alike (and to rob the narcissists of the glory of seeing their names or stories in print).

Use of this blog constitutes your understanding, acceptance of, and agreement to these terms.